Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

There are two laughs in this documentary about funny-girl Joan Rivers. The Michelle Obama joke and I can't remember the other. Somewhere between self absorbed pity fuel-ling a license to insult and a need to please is this quite wonderful witty woman who can't spell vagina but makes jokes about them. At 75 an looking like Barbie's grandma, Rivers verbal avalanche of scattergun jokes makes you yearn for the days of Harpo Marx and maybe then Groucho if you need to hear a joke later. She is like the unofficial rat pack gal sidekick of the 50s and 60s who hasn't yet realized the rat pack days and the Las Vegas laminex table comedy they thought was luxury showbiz is all sooooo last Century. She lives well as displayed in a hilarious tacky Manhattan apartment that looks like an explosion on the set of the 1936 ROMEO AND JULIET set at MGM, she signs a dozen checks with which she buys an image of generosity, she does meals on wheels and in the film's one truly moving moment pays tribute to Florence Fox, an innovative NY photographer now almost destitute. Maybe Joan could also slip her a few checks. I'd like to have seen Joan meet Mimi Weddell the NY fashionista who died in 2009 aged 94 and still going to auditions. Rivers really is not funny. She knows too that yelling obscenities is as passé as Don Rickles doing stand up at 88. Somehow she is interesting no matter how hard she tries to prove how awful-funny she can be. A PIECE OF WORK is getting a good National release in Australia and the audience at a session I went to laughed occasionally. As we filed out most muttered how glad it wasn't one of her shows we are at since she really would have been in front of us. It was better she was just an image on a screen. I feel mean for writing some unpleasant reactions about her.. but it could be worse, I could make fun of her. Or is that what she prefers since it is what she does to everyone else including herself.....Basically it makes you yearn for Carol Channing or Lily Tomlin who really are funny and probably can spell vagina but do not need to.

In Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg's documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, we get an up close and personal behind one of the hardest working woman in show-business. From her youthful aspirations to become an actress, we find out that comedy wasn't always priority number one on Joan's list. Comedy was a way to support her acting career. She later notes that you can make fun of her comedy career all you want, but leave her acting abilities alone. She even suggests that she is an actress playing a comedienne.

Following a successful appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, her career was and her "industry" was set in stone. There was no turning back. From performing her act in Vegas and her hosting of The Tonight Show for Johnny on numerous occasions. Her comedy was (and is) in your face. If a joke is thought to be too edgy, she knows she hit her mark.

I'll let you fill in the rest when you see the movie, but this isn't about where Joan has gone or the accomplishments she has achieved. It's about who Joan is today, how she is constantly looking to reinvent herself and stay fresh. Her unbridled enthusiasm for performing and staying busy. Her commitment to family and helping others.

In the film, we see Joan talking on the phone, looking for an endorsement deal. She says she'll speak for anything, including adult diapers and male enhancement drugs. She's not a sell out, but is willing to thrust herself upon the masses in order to get noticed. Through much of the film we see her working on a stage play, a sort of autobiographical play where she delves into what it's like to be Joan. Her concern isn't about whether or not people will like her, but whether or not they will accept her back into the mainstream. She is well aware that people view her as the poster child for plastic surgery. She is well aware that her age (75) is something that can hurt her to land a job. Does that stop her? It only strengthens her desire to succeed.

While some people will view this movie as a cry for attention, and I can see how they would feel this way. Joan lives a life of luxury, in a posh, elegant, and expensive apartment in New York City. Her need to live luxuriously and with all of the plastic surgery stems from her past where she never felt nor was never told she was beautiful. She needs this things in order to feel pretty, to feel like there is a reason to wake up.

That is not what this film is about. We are not meant to feel bad for someone who doesn't feel pretty. We are meant to see a woman who gives her all for her fans, whom she adores, and her family, that she cares for tremendously, especially her daughter and grandson. There is a brief moment where she sits down to write out a stack of checks, both for herself and also to others, like family members who attend private school and whatnot. She doesn't bat an eye at this stack, but breezes through them because she knows they must be paid for.

Her comedy might not be your cup of tea, but I think we can all learn something from this relentless woman. A life devoted to work and to family. What a piece of work. It's a shame that this film was left off the short list for Best Documentary for the Oscars. I hope you will all see it nonetheless.

I was surprised of the movie not being recognized by the Academy of Documentary. I guess they don't want anything to do with Joan Rivers, and that's the whole point of the documentary. The doc started out with Joan Rivers' lowpoint of her career (when she's already 70 years old), and it progresses with Rivers working her way up again. The film demonstrates how the once comedic icon and well known star turned into "a piece of work". With her comedic talents blending with her sad emotions, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is a snub that the Academy missed out on. OscarBuzz: NONE, that's the point! The Academy is missing out a a great film that shows the love for Joan Rivers and her career. She may be the one 70 year-old that still loves and wants to do her job.

After seeing the trailer, my expectations were moderately high. The movie far exceeds them. It is screamingly funny (Joan Rivers is screamingly funny) and poignant as well. I am partial to people who have a passion and work their hearts out; Joan Rivers exemplifies this. As a writer who's seen ups and downs, I found her up-and-down trajectory inspirational. The humor is often raunchy and always hilarious. Because she cannot do her best jokes on television, I found the movie broadened my perspective on what she is able to do (a lot!). If you've ever liked her jokes, definitely go see this movie. While it's true that the film maker could have dug a bit deeper into some of the darker subjects, I think that would have drastically changed the amazing balance between comedy and seriousness for the worse. A lot is conveyed without belaboring the difficult issues. Although Joan Rivers was virtually in every frame (a few exceptions where some people spoke about her), I never tired of seeing and, especially, hearing her. She has a store of funny and the ability to tap into it, whatever else is happening.

Joan Rivers is asked, "Don't we want to be loved for our real self?" To which she tellingly replies, "What's the real self?"

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is not funny even though you'd expect a year in the life of one of the world's funniest ladies to be so. But it is as documentaries go one of the best ever: It is uncompromising in depicting how a 75 year-old icon is working every minute of her day, not to sharpen her craft necessarily, but rather to make money to keep up a lavish lifestyle best exemplified by her Versailles-like apartment in New York.

Truth is, however, that she likes what she does better than anything else, a workaholic who makes people laugh. In the process she is ribald, abrasive, bitchy, and irreverent, attributes she displayed almost 50 years ago, when highly educated ladies just didn't do that kind of thing. But from the Tonight show with Johnny Carson through Celebrity Apprentice, she has done it all in comedy while taking gigs from Wisconsin to Juno, all to stay alive in a profession that eats its young and discards its seniors every day.

When she says, "Let me show you what fear is" and explicates by revealing a blank appointment page, she is speaking for every worker in show business—most of whom face periods of inactivity regularly and bravely. Her fear of bombing with her act is almost as palpable and never more apparent than when she painfully puts down a heckler but suffers remorse for what it did to him, her audience, and of course her self confidence.

Yet the two most devastating events of her life, the suicide of husband Edgar and the ultimate rejection by Johnny Carson may have affected her most in 75 years. This doc is much more about suffering than laughter.

Rivers holds her acting talent above her comedic, a telling admission about the calculating, opportunistic foundation of her career, with comedy a mere avocation. Directors Riki Stern and Anne Sundberg skillfully keep the tension of uncertainty on Joan, as if the camera should be as close as possible to Joan's face to capture that actress's honesty.

"Actress" and "honesty" don't always go together, and they are in question here. How honest is any portrayal by a comic who keeps thousands of jokes on file and surgically alters her face as many times as she may change jewelry? On this topic, I remain skeptical; on the matter of this doc being successful deconstruction of show business's vagaries, it's a powerful work in progress.